Re: Homo erectus, city dweller and sailor

On Sep 11, 3:18 am, veritas <khogan...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Sep 10, 8:31 am, Tom McDonald <kilt...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:





veritas wrote:
On Sep 9, 11:55 am, Tom McDonald <kilt...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Doug Weller wrote:
On Sun, 09 Sep 2007 00:16:17 -0700, in sci.archaeology, veritas wrote:
Since when to you is a theory NOT a wild-ass guess? What physical
evidece to I have to produce this time? I don't have to mail it to
you or anything do I? I don't have to do homework? I can just tell
you were to look and you will look? Regards, Ke
Killfile Giwer. Since he knows THE TRUTH he isn't interested in
discussion, only in converting people.
I agree in general about Giwer. But in the specific issue of what
science means by the term 'theory', he is not wrong, and Ken is.

This is what I find infuriating about Giwer. On some issues, he
is on the side of the angels (scientifically, at least). But he
has given his heart to historical revisionism wrt at least the
Holocaust, and this makes him unreliable on related issues.

Still, killfiling will do more good than harm in his case.

But I will tell you it is my theory, not fact. He absolutely refuses
to take clear hard evidence, and just say, as I did on the dinosaurs,
I had my facts wrong. I looked at the charts and skimmed them
actually. But I say I'm wrong if I am. He won't no matter what the
subject. I have delt with him, and the historical revisionism drives
me crazy as well. Science to me means trying to find the "truth" of
something that everyone can test and see the same results you do.
Theories are made to be busted. My theory that we don't know where we
really came from is my "theory" and is made to be busted. Regards,
Ken

Ken, the term 'theory' in science has a very specific meaning,
and it is not the same as is used in common parlance. A theory is
an explanation for a set of facts that is not contradicted by any
relevant data. It has been tested, and has not yet been shown to
be lacking. Einstein's theory of relativity is one such; the
theory of evolution (the neo-Darwinian synthesis, that is) is
another; string 'theory' is not--yet. (Many scientists object to
using 'theory' for string theory on the grounds that none of its
{so-far purely mathematical} iterations have yet found real-world
confirming data [though this may be changing].)

Before you get to 'theory', you need to have gone through a
process of proposing one or more hypotheses to explain a given
set of facts; and then testing those hypotheses against all the
relevant facts you (and anyone else) can find. You may have to
refine your hypothesis/es as you test. At the end, everyone may
be able to trust your hypothesis/es enough to consider it a theory.

Now the process of developing hypotheses often begins with
wild-ass guesses or more or less informed speculation. But by the
time it gets to be a theory, it is neither of those things any more.

This is a group in the sci.* hierarchy of Usenet. Some of us
think it is important to remember that, and to use scientific
terms in the way science uses them. This can be difficult for
newcomers to these groups to get at first; but, as in your case,
if you come here at least partly for advice or information, you
deserve to get the best *scientific* advice and information we
can offer.

You have a hypothesis. It does not accommodate all of the
relevant facts. It does not accommodate the DNA evidence, and nor
does it accommodate the fossil evidence. Your WAG/busted
hypothesis is fine as the basis of a fictional world; but it's
not a hard science fictional world so much as it is a fantasy
world. This is OK, as long as you don't try to push it as fact.

Hell, I have a 'theory' that whenever announcers during Green Bay
Packers (Go Pack!) football games mention a Brett Favre streak of
good things, the results of the next play will end that streak.
But when I watch the Packers, I'm a fan of the team and the game,
not a man of science. (Even though this particular theory is
empirically true. :-))- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Tom, as I have a lot of respect for you and Doug Weller, and
J.LyonLayden I had this long post explaining the forty years of
research and went to post it and they told me I had been on here to
long. Will try later. Regards, Ken- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Tom,
I will start with a few, stop and do another as this takes to long.
I have studied world history, human history, religions, philosophy,
logic, and psychology for forty years. (Obviously not dinosaurs as
well!)
From all thes studies I observed things that did not fit into the
puzzle of human history as told by historians. They like neatness,
and tend to throw pieces that don't fit aside.
The first thing that caught my attention was that the effects of the
eruption of Mt. Toba approx. 71,000 B.C.E. was the second largest
eruption known in the last 450 million years and yet had been ignored
in any studies in the development of human history.
From the study of Neanderthals, and erectus, the fact that we replaced
them all had reasons behind it, but nobody would speculate, not even a
hypothosis. I had, out of interest in history studied all those
things and came up with one of my own.
When Mt. Toba erupted, the world was thrown into five or six years of
winter. For hunter-gathererers that is a catastrophic event. There
is little to hunt and almost nothing to receive carbs from. The
estimates at the time (five years ago) were that 75% of the animals
died on the plant in this event.
The estimate was also made that the Earth went into a 1,000 year
instant ice age. That would have been hard enough on living
creatures, and survival for hunter-gatherers would have been almost
impossible. Thenthe instant ice age was followed up by a 19,000 year
ice age to make life even harder. Ice core samples taken and charted
have confirmed these temperature changes.
Then in 2001 when the gene map (Developing a haplotye Map of the Human
Genome noted that from all the samples taken all over the world, they
could make up one map and it would serve every human on the planet,
except for a couple of tribes in Africa. They thought that very
strange at the time. As I had studied the migration patterns of
modern humans out of Africa over to Asia, noting the coastlines were
always the paths, the idea came that it was because there was no one
in their way. I'll leave it here for shortness sake and finish on
another post. Regards, Ken


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